


been gone since yesterday

by soyicedcoffee



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Forgiveness, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22752232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyicedcoffee/pseuds/soyicedcoffee
Summary: Loving Adam was an exercise in forgiveness. And forgiving him was easy, really. Like being pulled in by the tide, like magnets, I couldn’t resist, even though I wanted to and knew I should.(Burnt but instead of Adam/Helene it's Adam/Tony)
Relationships: Tony Balerdi/Adam Jones
Comments: 9
Kudos: 77





	been gone since yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> burnt 2015 but make it gayer
> 
> all inaccuracies are due to the fact that they took this movie off of netflix the day after i watched it

When I heard Adam was back, I knew I would forgive him everything. I knew it as well as I knew that the sun would rise in the morning.

I knew I would forgive him fucking us over. I would forgive him skipping town. I would forgive him the years I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. All that time, a dark part of me said good. A darker part of me mourned, grieving his loss over and over again.

It wasn’t a matter of mercy, really, although I’m sure that’s how he saw it. Because he was suddenly decent, and sober, and shiny and new in an indescribable way, and I knew he wouldn’t see it for the absolute weakness, absolute submission that it really was. Or if he did, he didn’t show it.

I knew I would forgive him everything – leaving my life and our restaurant in shatters. Leaving me to pick up the pieces. I knew I would even forgive him this: All the nights after the restaurant closed, streets of Paris quiet but for the whooping of sirens, that I would go home with him, and let him fuck me into the mattress. All the times I sank to my knees in front of him in between services and sucked him off, slow and messy and deep. And all the times he said it was just relieving tension, it was just a bit of fun. All the times he’d called me baby before he came, and then left me after to shower, the implication that I should clean myself up and make myself scarce heavy in the air. All the times he said _fuck, Tones, your mouth is fucking amazing,_ and then I’d pass a beautiful woman entering his apartment just as I was leaving. How I’d burned – with envy, yes, but mostly with shame, so heavy and scorching I thought it would eat me alive. He broke my heart by leaving, but in truth he broke my heart hundreds of times before that. And those times were sometimes even harder to forgive, because of how heavy they sat on my soul.

Loving Adam was an exercise in forgiveness. And forgiving him was easy, really. Like being pulled in by the tide, like magnets, I couldn’t resist, even though I wanted to and knew I should. The offer was too good – work with him again, get our third star. I grumbled, of course, as I always did, etching reluctance and anger on my features. He could see through me, as he always could, and I saw the moment, the small quirk of his lips when he knew he had me.

So we worked together, and we worked together well, as we always had. When he got over his ego, the restaurant thrived, and he made some fucking amazing food, all while I ran the front of house like a military operation. And now that he was good guy Adam (doesn’t drink, doesn’t snort, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t fuck women, doesn’t fuck with me), he never even mentioned what happened between us, what we’d had in Paris. He never tried to bring it all out in the open, never tried to make amends for it like how AA probably told him he should, and I was grateful for that – I couldn’t have handled the shame of it, hearing him say _I’m so sorry, Tony. It was a mistake to fuck around with you like that when I didn’t have feelings for you. When I knew you loved me._

And then – things were going so well, really, and we could see our third Michelin star just on the horizon, and Adam had invited me to that party.

“Do you have a suit that’s less… stuffy?” he’d asked, and I’d frowned, looking down at the expensive wool suit I was wearing.

“Asshole,” I muttered. “Like you know anything about dressing well,” I gestured to his white chef’s outfit. He chuckled, and I turned to walk away, get back to work.

“Wait,” he said, laughter in his voice. “Come to a party with me.”

It wasn’t a question, and it sounded so much like _come home with me, Are you up, Tony? Come over,_ that I jolted.

“A party?” I asked hesitantly, and he knew he’d won.

-

We’d been to parties together. When we were younger, always drunk or high, and he was a rising star on the culinary scene. We were invited to parties almost every night, and we’d gone to many of them, even though we were working 100 hour weeks, surviving on caffeine and adrenaline and little else. Often he’d go home with women, and sometimes I’d go home with men, but if that fell through (as I always secretly hoped it would) we’d go home with each other, sitting silently in a taxi and then fumbling through his door, fucking fast and hard and messy because we had to be up and on our way to the restaurant in less than four hours.

Most of those parties weren’t like this one though, all mingling and canapes and champagne. He looked good – slim black suit, no tie. I wondered, not for the first time, why he’d invited me and not Helene, or anyone else. I was wearing a dusty pink suit, straying from my usual dark wools and tweeds. It was showier than anything I’d usually wear, and when he saw me he looked over me appreciatively in a way I pretended didn’t make my toes curl in my shoes. And I wondered again, _why am I here?_

And then – and then as we were walking in, “Pretend you’re my boyfriend,” he said, inching closer to me as we walked so our arms brushed. I froze, practically swallowing my own tongue, and had to force my legs to move under me.

“If we were boyfriends,” I choked out, “I think I would be holding your arm.”

I saw him smile. A soft, small, private smile, and my heart was pounding hard in my chest. He held his arm out, and I hesitated, but I realized I had no choice, since I’d basically asked, and looped my arm through his.

“If we were boyfriends, we would have had a fight in the car over and we wouldn’t be talking right now,” he corrected, and I laughed, because I could see the truth in it. My mind was reeling, and I had to stop it in its tracks, focus on the feeling of his arm on mine instead of the constant litany of _if we were boyfriends, if we were boyfriends, if we were boyfriends,_ scrolling through my head like a brightly lit marquee.

When we walked into the stark, high-ceilinged warehouse where the party was being held, I expected he would drop my arm immediately, and I wouldn’t have blamed him, really. He didn’t, though, and even when he finally did he still touched me, casually intimate in a way that made my head spin. He pulled me into every conversation, _you know my maître d’, Tony._ Chatting about food, the restaurant business. I could keep up as well as he could, and sometimes even better, even with his hand lightly pressed to my lower back, which I was finding hopelessly distracting.

Being with him like this, I let myself sink into the fantasy, drinking champagne and leaning into him, even though I knew it couldn’t last.

When he bolted after talking to Anne Marie, it took me a few minutes to realize. I was deep in conversation when I looked up, and then looked around, and then looked around again. I finally saw Anne Marie, standing alone, and she made eye contact with me, shaking her head minutely.

I heaved a resigned sigh and extricated myself from the conversation I was having. It was just like him to run off, and I couldn’t stop anxious thoughts from flashing through my mind – was he using? Drinking? Doing something else irreparably stupid that would get our funding pulled? I left the party and set off on foot, thinking of where he might have gone. It was getting late and the sky had gone a dusky grey-blue, but it was still a warm night. When it came to me, I had to resist smacking myself in the forehead. I knew exactly where he was.

-

When I found him, I was relieved. I hadn’t really thought he would do something dumb, but I also didn’t know what kind of old wounds seeing Anne Marie might have opened. He didn’t see me as I approached, he had his head down, looking tired and defeated, leaning against the side of the fishmonger’s stall.

“Adam,” I said softly, and he looked up, surprised.

“How did you know where I’d be?”

“Adam,” I said again, exasperated, and he nodded. This is what he did now, when he was stressed. Surrounded himself with his job, food, the kitchen.

I abruptly felt tired, and I leaned heavily beside him.

“I’m sorry for ditching you,” he said eventually, and I could only manage a small shrug. “I just had to get out. Anne Marie, Reece…” he trailed off.

“I know,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“You really have to stop forgiving me,” he said, chuckling humorlessly. He looked at me then, and I looked at him right back. He’d ditched his suit jacket somewhere, and his shirt was wrinkled, sleeves rolled up his forearms, displaying his strong looking wrists and hands. He looked tired, I noticed, hints of dark purple emerging under his sparkling blue eyes.

“I can’t,” I said simply, and it was a confession, but a confession he already knew. It made me vulnerable, and I looked away, at the vegetable vendor across from us, at the people dressed in sterile white hurrying by, anywhere but at him. I ran a hand through my hair, and I could feel how it fell over my forehead, perfect coif disheveled. “I can’t, Adam.”

“You know, I have a lot of regrets,” he said.

“Do you?” I replied, but I immediately regretted the sarcasm in my voice, because I knew he did.

“When I’m trying to sleep at night, all these names and faces run through my head. People I betrayed, people I didn’t do right by, people I treated… My mother, my grandmother, Jean-Luc.” he shook his head and sighed deeply. “But you’re at the top of the list, every time.”

I glanced at him, and I could see the regret and sadness on his face clear as day. I felt something in my chest shift and thaw, trickling down my rib cage. I’d forgiven him time and time again, but I’d never let myself empathize with him like this. Maybe because he’d never let himself be truly vulnerable with me, I couldn’t see the breadth and depth of his grief. But now I could see it clearly, feel its weight as if it were my own. All he’d had, and all he’d lost.

“I don’t know if I can get you to trust me again,” he said. “I don’t deserve it, anyway. I know I wasn’t good to you.”

I hadn’t thought about it like that before. I was powerless to stop forgiving him, but I could withhold my trust, and I had. Kept as much of a distance from him as I could. To maintain my sanity, to protect myself. “It’s-“ I started, but he cut me off.

“Don’t say it’s okay. It’s not,” he said decisively. He turned to me, then, and his hand came up and cupped my jaw. In a delirious moment, I wondered, _is he about to kiss me?_ But of course he didn’t. When his warm, calloused thumb stroked my cheek, though, it was almost the same thing. “I want to try though, Tony. To earn back your trust.”

I curled my fingers around his and gently pried his hand from my face. It was heaven to have him touch me like that, but I knew I was flying too close to the sun, and he was making it hard for me to think clearly. Physical contact with him always did that, made me feel like my brain was shrouded in cotton batting. “Okay,” I said.

-

The weeks passed, and we were working hard. It was almost like the old days, but with markedly less substance abuse and debauchery. I was wrung out and exhausted, not working as many hours as Adam but it was a close thing. And then the night we thought the Michelin men were in the restaurant, and Michel fucking us all over. In hindsight, I couldn’t blame him for what he did. The revenge was terribly belated and equally well deserved. In the moment, though, I wanted to put out a hit on him. I could have killed him myself.

I thought everything we’d worked for was down the drain. Even though Adam would be the three Michelin star chef, I had worked as if it would be me who would get the fame and glory. He wanted to prove himself to the world, to Montgomery and everyone else, and I wanted – needed – to prove myself to my father. My father was a good man, a serious man, sometimes harsh, but never cruel. He taught me everything I knew. But after Adam jumped ship, I could feel that I’d lost some of his respect, or at least his respect for my good judgment, and it pained me endlessly. Going back into business with Adam had been a huge risk on every level for me, financially, reputationally, but personally even more so. I needed this as much as Adam seemed to.

When Adam stormed out that night, I didn’t follow him. I couldn’t. And Helene knew she couldn’t leave either, even though she clearly wanted to. Being down our head chef was bad enough, being down our maître d’ or sous chef would have been beyond disastrous. We had to finish service and clean up like it was a normal day, even though Adam’s absence in the restaurant was glaring, and a grim, anxious mood had settled over the staff. They were probably wondering whether they’d still have a job come morning. I couldn’t blame them.

I’d been calling Adam all night, but my calls weren’t going through. I was halfway through dialing his number for what must have been the twentieth time when a call came through from an unknown number. “Tony. He’s okay, he’s with me. He just has to sleep it off,” said Reece, and my knees turned to jelly with relief. I had to brace my hand on my desk to stop from sinking to the floor.

“Thank you,” I croaked out, and I cringed internally at how I sounded, voice shot through with relief and exhaustion. “Thank you for calling.”

I slept hard that night, an adrenaline crash if I’d ever had one, surrendering gratefully to the weight of my duvet and my eyelids.

-

I don’t know what possessed me to call the number on the reservation. It’s not something I’d ever done before, and I’d endured some disastrous food critic visits in my time as a maître d’. But there was a feeling – one I stubbornly refused to call hope – niggling at the back of my brain, and as I dialed the number my heart was beating staccato in my chest. The phone rang, and then rang again, and then – and then a friendly American voice, “Midtown Insurance, how may I direct your call?”

It then occurred to me, quite forcefully, that I had no plan for once I got this far. Insurance… could it be a cover? Would they have given a fake number? “Yes, I was just calling to inquire about a claim. May I speak to…” I scrambled for the name on the reservation, nearly fumbling the paper I had it written on. “Jeremy Reynolds?”

A pause, the shuffling of papers. “Oh, I’m sorry,” the receptionist said brightly, “Jerry’s away on business this week. Overseas.” She said _overseas_ with the giddy awe of someone who’s never traveled internationally, and I knew for certain that she was telling the truth. “If you leave a message, I’ll be sure to pass it along though, hon.”

“No, thank you,” I said, slamming my phone down on my desk. I sat in silence for a long moment. The feeling was something beyond relief, beyond happiness, and I was dizzy with it.

“Helene!” I shouted out my office door. She was just starting prep for the day, but she ran over quickly, alarmed. “Helene!” I said again, quieter and more emphatic.

“What?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

I was beside myself, and I found it almost impossible to get the words out. “It wasn’t Michelin.”

She understood immediately, and clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. “Are you sure?” The look on my face must have answered for me, because she didn’t wait for me to respond. “We have to find Adam.”

-

We found Adam sitting on the bed in his hotel room. He looked – well, he looked hungover, which normally would have had me on a rampage but was powerless against my current level of euphoria. He also looked like he’d been hit by a bus. When we explained what happened – Helene and I talking over each other excitedly – he didn’t move for a long second. Helene and I exchanged a glance, raising our eyebrows at each other.

“Say something,” she prompted.

He nodded a little, to himself more than us, and finally stood up, pulled me toward him, and kissed me on the lips.

At first, the kiss was jarring, just a hard, celebratory press of our mouths together. His hands were on either side of my face, and I vaguely registered that mine were flailing by my sides. It was equal parts uncomfortable and wonderful – the taste of him was familiar, and it brought memory after memory crashing into my consciousness like tidal waves, so forceful that my mouth softened, and I leaned into him instinctively. And then his mouth softened too, and we were kissing – really kissing. My hands found his hips and I pulled him closer, and his hands went from gripping my face to cradling it. It was a few seconds that felt like an hour, and when he pulled away we were both breathing hard.

I heard a cough from beside me, and I startled. I had forgotten Helene was there. She laughed awkwardly, but she was smiling hard.

“What is… I don’t…” My mind reeled, and I started at least three sentences I couldn’t finish, because the only thing coming to mind was the feeling of Adam’s stubble against my cheek and his warm skin under my palms where his shirt rode up.

“I should go,” she said, and Adam went over and kissed her tenderly on the cheek.

“Thank you for everything,” he said quietly. “Back at it again tonight?”

“You know it,” she grinned. She reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “You’ll be okay, Tony,” she said, and I realized I must have looked as shocked by this turn of events as I felt.

When she left, Adam took a step toward me, closing the space between us.

“Tony-“ he started, looking like he was gearing up for some grand confession.

“No,” I said decisively. “Sit down.”

He looked surprised, so surprised he obeyed immediately and sat down on the bed.

“You’re injured,” I said.

“I’m fine,” he replied stubbornly.

“You’re in pain, I can tell.” I strode into the bathroom purposefully, washed my hands, and dug the first aid kit out from under the sink. When I got back he was where I left him. I sat down beside him, open kit beside me.

“This really brings me back,” he said, laughing grimly. “The number of times you’ve patched me up…”

“Mmm,” I hummed in acknowledgement. It was true, I’d done this many times – a cut from a sharp knife, a burn from a hot pan, a black eye and split lip from a bar fight. “What hurts?”

He pulled off his shirt reluctantly, and with enough difficulty that I intervened to help him, carefully maneuvering it over his head and arms. The brilliant constellation of blues and purples and reds on his back made me gasp aloud.

“It’s just a bruise,” he said, and I lightly ran my fingers over the tender skin, which made him suck in a breath through his teeth.

“It’s bleeding,” I murmured, my fingers skirting the edges of a patch of skin that was scraped raw and oozing blood.

I went through the motions I’d gone through with him a hundred times before – alcohol wipe, antiseptic ointment, bandage, his elbows on his knees as I cleaned the wound, shirtsleeves shoved up to my elbows. I liked having a job, and the familiar rhythm settled me so much that I was barely thinking about the kiss and its multifarious implications, and my hands were hardly shaking. I wanted to ask how it happened, but I held my tongue. It didn’t matter, because he was back and safe and okay. I curled around him as I worked, reaching across his back, and I let myself enjoy the warmth of his skin, the solidness of him under me.

When I was done, he pulled his white t-shirt back over his head. He didn’t speak, but silence didn’t make him uncomfortable like it did with me, a personality flaw he noticed, and I suspect often used against me.

“You kissed me,” I said.

He smiled. “I did.”

“In front of Helene.”

“Does that bother you?” he asked.

“I… No,” I said, which was true. “But I thought it would bother you.”

This triggered a troubled downturn of his lips, which bothered me more than I let on. I wanted to reach out and smooth out the unhappy lines of his face with my thumbs. “Do you trust me?” he asked, looking at me searchingly, like the truth would be revealed in the miniscule movements of my facial muscles.

“Yes,” I said, my voice practically a whisper, and I found that it was true. Because the worst thing had happened, the third star he’d been hanging his hopes on had been pulled from under him – and yes, he had left, quite spectacularly – but he hadn’t disappeared. He had come back to a place where I could find him, a place where he knew I _would_ find him.

“You do?” he asked, voice flat and gruff. I saw the break in him, then, the fear and hope flashing across his usually schooled features.

“I do.”

When he kissed me, I melted into it immediately. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, but I didn’t want to hurt him, so I settled my palms on his chest instead. It was gentle and rough in turns, and when his teeth softly nipped at my lower lip I gasped and scrambled into his lap, seeking a better angle. When his tongue swiped into my mouth, I groaned and my hands tightened in the soft cotton of his t-shirt, bunching up the fabric at his chest. I could feel how hard his chest was under my hands, how big his hands were where they rested on my hips, and it turned me on in this primal way that made me dizzy and desperate. I could feel that he was hard, and I wondered deliriously if we would get off like this, grinding like horny teenagers.

His hand hitched under my tweed clad thigh and he shifted me so I was pressed as close to him as I could get. I had to pull away from his mouth so I could breathe for a second, our foreheads pressed together.

“Adam, what are we doing?” I breathed, and he chuckled, ducking his head so he could get his mouth on my neck.

“Still sensitive here,” he murmured as I squirmed in his lap. “Do you want to stop?” he asked, teeth scraping over my throat.

“Fuck no. Don’t you dare,” I growled. “Take this off,” I said, tugging at the bottom of his shirt, which may have been ungenerous of me given his injuries, but I didn’t care. I felt him smile against my throat.

“You first,” he said, but he didn’t wait for me to start on my buttons, he was already undoing them with steady fingers. When he pushed my shirt off my shoulders, his thumbs brushed over my nipples, and I shuddered in his lap. He did it again and again, and my breathing was coming shallow and fast from the simple touch.

“Adam,” I said, a breathy, pleading thing, but I didn’t know what I was asking for beyond _more._

“I love how you say my name,” he said between kissing me. “I wanna take you apart, Tony. You have no idea. When I saw you again…”

The words made my stomach flip, and I climbed off his lap so I could take off my shoes and socks and trousers, and he did the same, shifting carefully as he pulled his shirt over his injured shoulder.

We ended up in the middle of the bed, me lying on my back, him braced over me, leaning on his good arm, caging me in. He surrounded me – his smell, his warmth, his brilliant blue eyes trained on my face. The warmth was like a patch of sun on a summer day. His naked thigh was between my legs. The pressure was amazing, but the friction wasn’t nearly enough.

“Adam,” I whined, which was objectively embarrassing, but the logical part of my brain was firmly switched off, so I didn’t care.

“Keep saying my name, baby,” he said, with the kind of cocky self-assuredness that would normally make me roll my eyes, but now just made me jerk my hips up with a groan, trying to find purchase. “Fuck, you look good like this,” he continued. He was always a dirty talker, which I imagined served him well, because he was very good at it. “You make me want to ruin you.”

I knew I must have looked wrecked, but he wasn’t much better off – eyes half lidded, mouth bitten red, hair fucked up from my hands – and the feeling of his cock hard and leaking against my hip. I shifted my thigh against him as much as I could, and I heard the hitch of his breath, saw his eyes slide closed.

He was doing everything slow and thorough and it was driving me crazy, but the more desperation I showed the slower he went. It was completely different from any time we’d been together before – always hard and fast and just this side of uncomfortable. It occurred to me that if he left after this it would destroy me, but the thought was just a flash in my mind before the feeling of his mouth on my chest brought me back into the moment. He spent what felt like a hundred years with his mouth on my nipples, biting and sucking and kissing, making me shift against the mattress and moan brokenly. I slipped my hands into his hair, tugging at the roots.

He worked his way down my body, lingering on the flat of my solar plexus, on the slight softness of my stomach, the ridge of my hip bones. It was a kind of worship I’d never experienced, from him or from anyone else I’d slept with, and it left me feeling vaguely embarrassed but mostly hot, or the kind of feverish hot-cold that made my skin feel like tv static.

When he got his mouth on my dick I was so worked up that I was sure it wouldn’t take long for me to come, but he swallowed me down slow, pulling off whenever I started to gain any momentum, holding my hips down firmly with his hands so I couldn’t buck up.

“Jesus, Adam, why are you doing this to me?” I groaned, and I wasn’t thinking through my words, barely registering what I was saying through the haze of arousal.

When he looked up at me, his eyes were noticeably darkened. “If you could see yourself right now, Tones, you’d know why,” he said, voice rough. He licked at the tip of my cock, laved the flat of his tongue up the length, and I wanted it to be enough but it just wasn’t, even though the image of him between my legs, looking up at me, made all of the blood in my body rush southward.

“Adam, I need-“ I started, but at that moment he swallowed around my cock, taking it deep, and I trailed off into a moan. “Adam, stop,” I said, voice verging on desperate, and he pulled off immediately, concern shining in his eyes.

“Can you just-“ I pulled on his hand that was resting on my hip. “Can you just come up here?” I asked. His mouth was good but I needed him closer.

He smiled and dropped a kiss on my hip where his hand just was, then hoisted himself back up so we were chest to chest. I saw him wince at the movement, and I felt a pang of worry. I couldn’t stop myself from fluttering my hand over his injured shoulder worriedly, eyebrows furrowing. “I’m fine,” he said quietly, laughter in his voice. “I’m okay, Tony.” He kissed me, all gentle and sweet and chaste on the side of my mouth.

He was still then for a long moment, just looking into my eyes, and I wondered distantly what he was seeing, what he was looking for. In his I saw a sober, earnest intensity I’d never seen on him before, and it knocked me breathless. Then, he took my cock in his hand and started stroking me, slow but certain, and I did the same for him. The position made us slow and clumsy in the best way, and the feeling of his body pressing against mine was making me crazy. He had a perfect cock – the weight and curve of it in my hand brought back memories of what it felt like when he fucked me, what it felt like to be filled up by him and surrounded by him.

“God, I want you inside me,” I groaned. I rubbed my thumb under the head where I knew he was sensitive and he jolted in my grasp. His hand was cupping my jaw and he slipped his thumb into my mouth, and without a thought I closed my lips around it and sucked.

“Fuck,” he cursed. “Next time, sweetheart.” The pet name and the promise of _next time_ made me gasp and squeeze my eyes shut. I wasn’t going to last much longer, and my thoughts were fuzzing out at the edges so I could only focus on him – his voice, his calloused hands, the feeling of my orgasm building in my lower stomach. I knew he was close, too, because of how much he was talking, a stream of consciousness that was always more eloquent and less ridiculous than it should have been. _Just as good as I remember. So fucking gorgeous, Tony. So fucking good, baby, you’re so good for me._

When I came, it was searing, white hot, a full body orgasm that made my thighs shake and my toes curl. I knew I was loud and I tried to muffle it, burying my face in the side of his neck. My hand on him jolted and slowed, and he wrapped his hand around mine, maintaining a steady rhythm and pace.

When he came, it was with a quiet moan. I was still riding out my orgasm, and my cock twitched at the sound, at the image of him losing himself above me, and at the feeling of his semen hitting my stomach.

Our come was mingling, cooling on my stomach, and he ran a finger through it, rubbing it in possessively. Intellectually, I found it incredibly disgusting, but I was still coming down from my orgasm, so any disgust was overwhelmed by the pull of arousal I felt deep in my stomach.

“I love this,” he murmured. “It’s like you’re mine.”

The words turned me on, but they also made my heart flutter like a teenager getting asked to prom. “I am yours,” I said, and it was only as I said it that I realized it was too true to say out loud. But it was too late, and I couldn’t take the words back.

“Tony…” he said softly, and I knew this was it. I sighed. I couldn’t look at him anymore, and I turned my head away, the enormity of everything hitting me at once. It was a celebratory fuck and nothing more, and why did I believe differently for even a second?

“I mean…” I reached for what to say, something to de-escalate. “I just- I did not mean to say that. Post-orgasm bullshit,” I muttered. I tried to wriggle out from under him, suddenly desperate to clean myself up. He grabbed my arm – not hard, just firm, but I flinched. “Adam, seriously,” I said, trying to sound serious but to my ears I just sounded pleading and afraid. “I need to get a washcloth.”

“I’ll go,” he said, and before I could protest he was kissing me on the cheek and standing up, heading for the bathroom. I just lay there, catastrophizing and wanting to die of embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I said all that shit, accepted it when he said _next time_ as if there would be one, and I wondered foolishly if there was any way I could leave before he got back with the towel.

“Here,” he said, holding the wet washcloth out to me, and when I realized it was warm I frowned, and I felt a pang of guilt at how dismissive I was being.

“Thank you,” I said politely, and he pulled on his underwear and jeans and sat down on the bed as I cleaned my stomach and started getting dressed. I knew he was watching me, but I couldn’t look at him, at what I was sure would be pity and regret on his face.

“You’re freaking out,” he said. I paused for a second, hands paused in my quest to button my shirt. “Come here,” he said, reaching out toward me, and I sidestepped his hand.

“I should really get going,” I said. “I have a lot to do before lunch today, and it’s getting late.”

“It’s not even 9:30,” he protested. Sure enough, the bedside table clock read 9:25 in flashing red. “Tony, please.” I focused hard on pulling my jacket on and reaching for my tie, which was draped over the bedside lamp.

I heard him move, and then his hands were on my arms, holding me steady. “Talk to me,” he said, reaching up and gently tilting my chin up so I was looking at him. He was still shirtless, and I tried to pretend that his tan chest and toned stomach (and his arms and his neck and his fucking shoulders) weren’t having any effect on me. I was surprised at the look on his face – nothing close to pity like I feared, but more nervous, puzzled, curious. I swallowed.

I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t tell him how afraid I was of getting my heart broken again. I couldn’t tell him how strong my feelings were, even though I suspected he already knew. “I don’t understand what’s happening right now,” I eventually said.

He sighed and let go of my arms. “That’s probably fair,” he said. He looked at me for a long second, then nodded like he decided something and was psyching himself up to follow through. “Let me lay it out, then.” He ran a hand through his hair anxiously. “I have feelings for you, Tony. I guess I always have, but when I saw you again I just realized…” He shook his head and turned away. “I realized that I love you, and I had to give this a shot.”

I was stunned, or possibly in shock. My mouth moved, but I was speechless.

“I know I fucked things up between us. Like, monumentally. The biggest fuck up of my life, and I’ve had more than my share,” he laughed wryly, scrubbing a hand over his face. “If you can’t get past that, or you just think this is a bad idea, we can just pretend this never happened. Back to normal, no hard feelings,” he said. “We’re going back out there and getting that goddamned third star either way.”

“This is definitely a bad idea,” I said. And then I kissed him.

-

The day the 2016 Michelin Guide came out was the best day of my life.

When Kaitlin rushed into the kitchen, wielding that little book like a fucking trophy, my heart jumped to my throat. All she had to do was nod, and the kitchen burst into a deafening roar of applause and cheers. I looked at Adam across the counter from me, and he was already looking at me. His face twinned mine, a perfect mixture of shock and elation and relief.

He came around the counter and I thought he would give a speech, but he didn’t. “Good work, everyone,” he said, over the din of celebration, and everyone cheered louder. And then, as our coworkers and friends were celebrating, whooping and popping champagne bottles, he pulled me in and kissed me, soft and sweet, palm warm on the back of my neck.


End file.
